KINGSTON – Excavating done at the far end of the Opachinski Athletic Complex off Route 3A for a new ballfield project revealed artifacts and other evidence that Native Americans, ancestors of the Wampanoags, used the site to camp at Halls Swamp.

Before the ballfield project begins – possibly as soon as next month – the site will be cleared of trees and stripped using special equipment that allows the recovery of artifacts.

Community Preservation Act funding approved at town meeting last year and this year – a total of $360,000 – is covering the cost of having Public Archaeology Laboratory personnel excavate the site, date the site and its artifacts, conduct an analysis of the artifacts, and then prepare reports.

The dig, which started during the winter, is being led by the laboratory’s project archaeologist, Erin Flynn, and senior archaeologist, Dianna Doucette. Aquinnah Wampanoag representative Elizabeth James-Perry is maintaining a regular presence.

“This site was used over and over again, season after season, for thousands of years,” Doucette said.

Workers are developing a picture of life as far back as 8,000 years ago.

Doucette said they continue to look for evidence of the different time periods represented at the site. They also have radiocarbon dates that are 5,000 years old and 700 years old, although no artifacts from 700 years ago have been found.

“We’re finding lots of artifacts that are going with the 5,000- and the 4,000-year-old dates, and that’s the Later Archaic (period),” Doucette said. “We’re looking for more evidence to help us figure out what they were doing during the different time periods.”

The workers open up 6-foot-square areas and split into quarters. Every quadrant is then excavated 10 centimeters at a time. All of the artifacts from each level of the particular quadrant are bagged together.

“The point is that we can reconstruct the site once we get back to the lab,” Doucette said. “The majority of what we’re doing is note taking and recording. We’re mapping where the artifacts are coming out of and what we call the features – the fire-cracked rock hearths and the pits – that are telling us what sorts of activities are going on out here.”

Last weekend, eight Public Archaeology Laboratory workers welcomed about 40 people to see the site for themselves. Test pits were dug to give visitors the chance to help screen for artifacts and get a feel for the site and the work archaeologists do.

The stripping by machine before the fields go in will be done carefully to see if there are any big features that may be evidence of burials at the site.